Saturday, 26 February 2011

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"Read on to see the unfixable damage wreaked by one of the most reckless social experiments visited on Britain - one the almost no one in journalism or academia dared to even protest. "

Telegraph
"To begin with, the low interest rates set by the European Central Bank fuelled an unsustainable boom. Now, the inability to devalue has rendered an export-led recovery harder to achieve. Moreover, the IMF and EU loans that prevented bankruptcy – which amount to 80 per cent of the country's GDP – could come at a high price. Other members of the eurozone have long disliked the generous corporation tax regime used to attract the hi-tech companies that were Ireland's principal source of prosperity, and may well insist that it is dismantled. With unemployment now close to 15 per cent, Ireland is also witnessing the emigration of its brightest citizens, a phenomenon it seems fated to suffer at periodic intervals."

Daily Mail
"But since last April, more than 700 such cases have already been reported – and investigators expect the final annual figure to exceed 800.Sources at the DSA warned that the figures were ‘the tip of the iceberg’ and thousands of drivers could have gained licences by cheating.The vast majority of offenders are foreign nationals, with Asians, Africans and Eastern Europeans among the most prolific.The scam works when the fraudsters pass themselves off as the person in the photo on the provisional licence which candidates must show at their test.Impersonators are charging £1,000 to sit theory tests and another £1,000 for practical tests."

Friday, 25 February 2011

The Adam Smith Institute
"Inflation, as commonly understood, is a general rise in prices, as measured by some index, such as the CPI, RPI or RPIX. On such an understanding, high commodity prices driven by strong demand (or limited supply) are ‘inflation’. So is an increase in a sales tax (like VAT). This is what we are hearing from the Bank of England at the moment.

But is this view of inflation correct? Austrian school economists don’t think so. To them, inflation is an increase in the supply of money. Rising prices are merely one consequence of that underlying phenomenon."

Tuesday, 22 February 2011

Telegraph
"Britain experienced the largest influx since the Saxons during the 13 years of the last Government with migrants arriving in the UK at a rate of almost one a minute.Enough foreign nationals to fill Birmingham three times over moved to the UK in a policy that critics have dubbed “Labour’s great betrayal”. Up to another million are feared to be here illegally, while a million Britons left the country during the years of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.The true legacy of the last Government is exposed today in a comprehensive review by the think-tank Migrationwatch.It has meant pressure on public services, roads, housing, schools and hospitals. "

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"But here’s the ultimate political reality: off the 25 seats with the biggest Muslim minority, Labor holds 24, with the Greens taking the 25th from it at the last election: ....All this explains why multiculturalists and much of the media so furious demand “bipartisanship” from the major parties. That is the only way that a policy that most voters think is against the national interest can be foisted upon them. And so minorities are bought off at the expense of majority.
Be warned by Britain, which has suffered from such craven politics: .....

Daily Mail
"The report shows that net immigration, the number of immigrants arriving versus those leaving, had reached almost three million by mid-2009.Campaign group MigrationWatch said figures to be published by the Office for National Statistics on Thursday will show that by mid-2010 that total had reached 3.2million.In recent years, migrants have been arriving at the rate of around ‘one every minute’, the group’s report says.It comes as a poll found, for the first time, that those in the 16-24 age group were more worried about migrant numbers than those in their 30s.The 3.2million population increase does not include illegal immigrants – of whom there are around one million in the UK."
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Monday, 21 February 2011

Daily Mail
"The Spanish government estimates there are 700,000 unsold new-build houses across the country."
"As the property bubble has burst, so the rest of the Spanish economy has suffered.The banks are sitting on vast amounts of bad debt, while the construction industry has collapsed.Reports recently showed that of 60,000 property sector companies, 23,600 have gone bust, with debts of more than £100 billion.As a result of this economic turmoil, Spain is now in the midst of its worst recession for 50 years.A record 4.6 million Spanish workers, or one in five, are now unemployed. This figure is the highest in Europe."

Friday, 18 February 2011

Yahoo News - 5 illegal foods from across the globe.…
"While we are generally allowed freedom of choice when it comes to what we eat, there are some foods that have been deemed so controversial they have been banned from sale. In fact, a surprising number of foods have been banned across the globe due to suspected negative effects on the health, safety and wellbeing of consumers. Here are our top 5 forbidden foods."

Thursday, 17 February 2011

Daily Mail
"A Labour-run council jacked up the salary of its chief executive by 7 per cent yesterday in defiance of calls for pay cuts.Paul Walker’s inflation-busting rise takes his pay to £168,000.Last night, the decision was condemned by trade unions as ‘morally indefensible’ and the Tories as unjustifiable.The increase, in Hartlepool, comes as other Labour-led councils in the North are saying Government cuts mean they have no choice but to reduce services for children, the elderly, leisure and libraries, because they have no bureaucratic waste to slash."

Tuesday, 15 February 2011

NYT
"With its economy dependent on oil and gas, which make up about 60 percent of all exports, Russia sees little choice but to go offshore — using foreign partners to provide expertise and share the billions of dollars in development costs.

And if anything, the gulf disaster encouraged Russia to push ahead with BP as its first partner. In the view of Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin, BP is the safest company to hire for offshore work today, having learned its lesson in the gulf.

“One beaten man is worth two unbeaten men,” Mr. Putin said, citing a Russian proverb, after BP signed its Arctic deal with Rosneft, the Russian state-owned oil company. The joint venture calls for the companies to explore three sections in the Kara Sea, an icebound coastal backwater north of central Russia.

The BP agreement touched off little public reaction in Russia, in part because the environmental movement is weak but also because opposition politicians have no way to block or hinder the process. "

Daily Mail
"Local government is now entirely producer-led. Everything is run for the benefit of those working in the organisation. And to hell with the mug punters paying for it through ever higher taxes and charges.Jumped-up local councillors suffered severe attacks of grandiosity and awarded themselves ridiculous titles, lavish expenses and fat allowances, which have doubled in five years.The old ‘ways and means’ committee, which met once a month to balance the books, was transformed into a full-blown ‘Cabinet’ in permanent session, Fairtrade coffee and Jaffa cakes all round.Salaries soared into the stratosphere as town clerks restyled themselves ‘chief executives’ and demanded private sector rewards. We have ended up with a significant number of local government employees being paid north of £200,000 a year. Now the money has run out, it falls to these superannuated superstars to decide where the ‘cuts’ must be implemented. And, as I predicted straight after the election, they aren’t going to put themselves out of work.So they cynically close libraries, day centres and swimming pools and give P45s to school dinner ladies and lollipop men. When it comes to the pain, it’s women and children first. "

Monday, 14 February 2011

Telegraph
"That allowed China to pull ahead with a GDP total of $5.88 trillion (£3.68 trillion) for 2010, on a non-adjusted nominal dollar basis, compared to $5.47 trillion for Japan.

By comparison, the United States recorded GDP of $14 trillion in 2009, but experts have predicted that after sweeping past Germany, France, the UK and now Japan, China will catch up with the US by as early as 2030.

Similar predictions were made for Japan’s prospects during the 1980s. However, after more than a decade, being overtaken by China reflects Japan’s declining political and economic power. "

Dr Richard North
"There are no cuts. I say again, there are no cuts. What the Cleggerons are talking about is a reduction in the rate of increase in public expenditure as compared with the June budget. This is helpfully summarised here (see left) and the source is here.

You will see that the current financial year expenditure is £696.8 billion. By 2014-15, the projected expenditure was to rise to £757.5 billion. Little George is now proposing that this increase is limited £739.8 billion. This now becomes a 17.7 percent "cut", albeit that expenditure is still increasing."

Telegraph
"Still, as I say, the story is now past correction. Denying the scale of the reductions – ie, quoting the actual statistics – is so jarring that, not only do you fail to convince, you damage your credibility across the board. It’s like claiming that Margaret Thatcher raised spending on the NHS: it might be statistically accurate but, to eighty per cent of your listeners, it establishes you as a liar.

What the government means by “cuts” is, in fact, what Thatch meant: that public spending will shrink as a proportion of GDP. In other words, the state sector will grow, but the private sector will grow faster. Since the former is funded by the latter, this surely makes sense.

Yet so embedded is the idea that there has been an absolute reduction in state spending that a narrative is now forming to the effect that the economic slowdown is being caused by “the cuts”. What cuts, for Heaven’s sake?"

Telegraph
"UK inflation is running at almost twice the rate as that on both the Continent and the US, as the weak pound has pushed up the cost of imports. A spike in global commodity prices, for oil and food in particular, has also fuelled price growth, as well as the VAT rise from 17.5pc to 20pc.

Despite soaring inflation, the Bank has left rates unchanged at their record low of 0.5pc for two full years. The Bank will explain its policy on Wednesday in its quarterly Inflation Report. The Governor has long argued that, excluding imported and one-off cost pressures, "inflation is close to zero and well below target".

However, markets have already begun to de-couple from central bank policy, with sterling rate futures pricing in a first move in May and a total 0.75 percentage point rise by the end of the year. "

Friday, 11 February 2011

Daily Mail
"The report found that information was withheld from the IMF and the public by the British authorities, Fund officials were intimidated, and regulators at home and abroad failed to spot serious risks in the banking system and the economy.It will make uncomfortable reading for current shadow chancellor Ed Balls, who was a powerful figure at the Treasury at the time.It will also be a blow to Labour leader Ed Miliband, who was an economic advisor to then Chancellor Gordon Brown in 2004 and 2005.The Conservatives claimed it was ‘incredibly telling’ of the way the Treasury operated with Mr Balls and Mr Brown at the helm.The aggressive attitude of Treasury officials meant the IMF was too soft with other regulators in the City of London, according to the report."

Wednesday, 9 February 2011

Daily Mail
"You might assume that being declared a ‘national treasure’ and boasting 10million listeners a week means Radio 4 is doing ­everything right.Yet the station’s output is still not good enough for the BBC Trust.In a performance review, it has ruled Radio 4 needs more northern presenters, a younger audience and to improve its appeal to ethnic minorities."

Tuesday, 8 February 2011

Daily Mail
"A flagship government building has been closed due to bad weather - five months after it was officially opened.Hundreds of civil servants were turned away from the Welsh Assembly Government's eco-friendly £20.2m HQ for safety reasons yesterday, after strong winds battered its roof.It has bombproof windows and was once dubbed the greenest building in Wales."

Daily Mail"We live in an age when all language is monitored as closely as it was in Communist East Germany and careers are ruined at the drop of a so-called ‘offensive’ remark. Yet the self-appointed moral guardians of the Left believe they have a divine right to hurl whatever slanders they like provided they simultaneously proclaim their own goodness."

Saturday, 5 February 2011

Independent
"Now comes the reckoning postponed, with the rate cuts and fiscal stimulus of 2008-09 gone. We will see more tax rises – including national insurance – and all-time highs in petrol prices, rail fares, energy bills and food costs. There will be reduced public services, unemployment nearing 3 million, falling house prices, and perhaps rising mortgage rates.

And even then we will not, as a nation, have paid the full price for past excess. Not to mention the risks of a eurozone meltdown, China's property bubble bursting, or another downturn in the US. The "re-balancing" will be painful."

Friday, 4 February 2011

Yahoo News /AP
"And Republican leaders now acknowledge they would be lucky to identify as much as $5 billion in stimulus-related spending cuts as part of a plan to save taxpayers $2.5 trillion over 10 years.

Where did the money go?

It's not that all the stimulus money has been spent; it has been committed for specific projects and programs. In the confusing money flow from Washington to the rest of the country, there's still about $168 billion in stimulus money that has not actually been paid out, according to the administration. But it says nearly all of that money already is tied up in contracts with companies, obligations with states and local governments, promised taxpayer relief and commitments to government programs."

Thursday, 3 February 2011

Telegraph
"The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO) gave warning that the high prices, already above levels in 2008 which sparked riots, were likely to rise further.

The FAO measures food prices from an index made up of a basket of key commodities such as wheat, milk, oil and sugar, and is widely watched by economists and politicians around the world as the first indicator of whether prices will end up higher on shop shelves. "